Missed Me?
by gottalovett
Summary: This is a character study piece of Missy's 'escape' mainly because I shamelessly enjoyed Michelle in the role and wanted to write her some deliciously awful lines. Osgood/Clara/12th Doctor all involved. A oneshot.


The room was white, an endless expanse of white, as far as the eye could see. Was this the afterlife? Osgood didn't know. She remembered the increasing terror, the moment when she'd known The Doctor couldn't save her, when she couldn't even save herself. Most frightening of all, Missy's loving stranglehold about Osgood's neck: first the sweet talk, then the spider's bite.

What had even happened? A flash of red light and then... floating nothing until now.

White rooms by the hour. Osgood would have given anything for something to happen. Then she heard it, footsteps against the wide corridor.

Previously invisible white doors slid open. No one there. Osgood closed her eyes, let out a long breath, stiffened.

"My, now doesn't this smack of de je vu?" a familiar, already loathed voice crooned into Osgood's ear. "I do hate to waste someone so tasty."

Osgood opened her eyes slowly, willing her dead? self to remain calm. It was a hallucination, she thought, a dream.

"Can I tell you another girly secret?" Missy said into her ear. "You'll looove it."

"This isn't real. I'm dead. You killed me," Osgood said firmly. "Let it be over now."

Long fingers stroked her hair.

"Not over yet, pet. Oh, you humans are so gullible and The Doctor with you. It'd almost be boring if I didn't have so much fun messing about with your teensy, inconsequential lives."

"But I remember," Osgood went on, painfully polite still. "You got me with your device thingy. Oh, this is ridiculous. I'm talking to emptiness, a void, a vacuum."

Missy laughed.

"Did you think, did you really, honestly think that I'd finish with you so quickly? Wait – don't answer that, you vapid fool. Of cause you did. Well let me share some home truths with you: death is the end, is the great equalizer, except for when _I'm_ involved."

"Right," Osgood said slowly. "Say I go along with this. Say I'm still existing somewhere... where? How?"

"You're in the Nethersphere, darling. Your body is thousands of atoms in stormy air, but I just destroyed my old interface. You're my back-up Seb. I couldn't help myself. You're. Just. Too. Yummy."

Osgood shuddered as Missy stroked the side of her face, red lips brushing one cheek.

"Mmm, more than yummy, delicious. Now then dear, why don't you say something nice?"

Rage bubbled, rage that had bubbled away inside all of Osgood's short life. She refused to be placid even into death.

"Fuck off."

"Temper, temper," Missy sucked in a breath. "I won't tolerate bad language in heaven."

Osgood had surprised even herself. She never swore.

"What do you want with me?"

"Want with you? Want with you? I thought that much was obvious – I want to toy with you, to make you suffer."

Missy lent forward and curled a hand in Osgood's hair. "I want to watch what you do when I do... this." She pulled Osgood's hair, hard. "And this." Lips on Osgood's.

Osgood contemplated struggling. It was futile. She softened. She told herself to ride the wave.

Sharp, red nails dug into Osgood's shoulder. A foot tapped.

"I'm waiting."

There was nothing of the seductive in Missy's voice now. Cold and hard and dangerous. "No, no, no," she went on as Osgood parted her mouth to allow (God help her) tongues. "Bless. Earth girls. How does The Doctor stay so virgin? No." A finger on Osgood's lips. "I'm waiting."

"Waiting?" Osgood stammered.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Every fibre of Osgood's being was strung tight with terror.

"Say. Something. Nice."

* * *

><p>Later...<p>

"I'm going to go play, poppet. I'll leave you to watch, shall I?"

Osgood gritted her teeth and bit her tongue. She was determined to survive this _madness_.

Missy's fingers traced around Osgood's lips and down her jaw line.

"Don't worry. You won't miss me for long." An exaggerated eye roll. "The Doctor is persistently predictable, as are his little fool tag-alongs."

"Great," Osgood muttered. How she'd yearned to be a companion.

"Oh, don't worry. I'll let you watch."

Missy clapped two hands together. A screen of light appeared before Osgood. Images of a graveyard began to flicker.

"We wouldn't want you to miss out on my little joke now, would we?"

Osgood's fingers itched for a slap. She made herself flex them softly. Missy tapped coordinates into her teleport bracelet. Osgood knew better than to try for an escape route. There was no way out of Missy's warped heaven, her constructed hell.

Missy blew Osgood an air kiss and was gone.

The particle screen Missy had conjured before Osgood shimmered with the perennial white light of the Nethersphere. Images became clearer. Grave stones. Cybermen. Clara Oswin. Danny Pink, Clara's boyfriend, now deceased, as Missy never failed to gloat about to Osgood, and The Doctor, coat flapping in the soft wind. Then, like a harridan out of a warped Disney nightmare, Julie Andrews gone horribly wrong, Missy descending from on high, umbrella completing her grand entrance. Osgood hated herself for even thinking it, but whatever else she was, the woman undeniably had style.

Osgood stood transfixed by the tableau, unsure if this had been Missy's intent all along. The Doctor's terror felt real. He would become the tactician, the soldier, to save Clara from murdering. He would kill one friend to save another friend's soul.

Osgood studied Missy's face, her parting cryptic words playing over and over like a broken tape. What devious plan had Missy devised? Osgood didn't trust the calculated smirk on the woman's face or the gloating gleam of the eyes. Why couldn't The Doctor see it? It was part of a plan, all intentional. Or did he see it, and he didn't care? He would let her go?

Osgood's rose tinted Doctor glasses had fallen to the ground and cracked, like scales shaved off a dragon's back. So even this was to be taken from her, her faith in The Doctor's innate wisdom, innate justice, and innate goodness.

Was The Doctor letting Missy get away? Osgood felt sick. If he was it was as Clara said. Her own death, others deaths at the hands of The Master, all on him.

The shot came from behind The Doctor. Osgood fell to her knees, hands to her mouth, as surprise made her forget to breathe. The Doctor hadn't been the one to do it, she realised through numb shock. A cyberman had.

Life flashed before Osgood's closed lids. Her sister and her racing as children. Osgood always aware how much prettier her blonde sister Stacey was. Passing GCSEs with flying colours. Later, science at Cambridge and hand picked so young for UNIT by Kate Lethbridge Stewart. Studying photos and files day after day in musty vaults, dreaming, longing. And then, the dream come true. Running in _his_ shadow, even if only for a short time, experiencing a kind of heaven. All ruined, cut short by The Doctor's deranged childhood friend. Now gone, evaporated, disintegrated.

Osgood opened her eyes. Tears flecked on what she presumed were pale avatar cheeks. She welcomed the coming moment, of hell fading. The screen had long since faded away, the white room now fading in a dizzy blur, pin pricks of dull and bright light at once.

"Yes," Osgood screamed, uncaring and alone. "Yes. Come for me. Grant me death. I am ready."

Footsteps. Footsteps echoing and the room steadying, and a hideous knowledge looming. Osgood felt a pit in her stomach as a figure drew nearer, the familiar shape a nightmare.

"Wasn't that fun?" Missy said, stepping lightly into the room, her red lipstick a slash wound. "Won't he get a nasty surprise the next time I come knocking."

Osgood sunk to her knees without realizing it.

"How?"

It came out a croaked whisper.

Missy laughed.

"Did you really think that I wouldn't protect myself from my own creation? (Oh, who am I kidding? Of course you didn't think) Cybermen have never been the most reliable of creatures. Besides," a dainty toss of the head. "I knew Danny wouldn't play. That was the point." She studied her nails, bored.

"This is all some kind of game to you," Osgood said.

"With high stakes, dear. Never forget it. I wanted my old friend back. I wanted to show him I was perfect for him, just as Clara was, and I did. I needed to reveal Clara's deep-seated brutality, and I did that too."

"You're pleased with yourself," Osgood said bitterly. "You're a monster."

"So I've been told by others before. Boring."

Osgood sighed.

"So how did you escape? Tell me. I can see that the wait for me to ask has been burning you up."

Missy tugged painfully at Osgood's ear and bent in close.

"I am linked to the Nethersphere and no one has been able to get to the hard drive. With the Nethersphere in operation, death can never be the end." She winked coquettishly. "Besides, I teleported."

She touched a hand to her signet ring.

"Idiot Doctor. Poor dead Osgood." She waved a hand about Osgood's face airily. "Have fun. You'll learn to love white. Somehow I think you'll be here a good long time." She grinned garishly. "Just me and you. What fun."

Osgood felt her chest tighten with panic. There was no inhaler to hand.

_The Doctor will save me. The Doctor will save me. The Doctor will save me..._

Over and over and over.

For all eternity.

* * *

><p>The damned coordinates revealed nothing but black expanse encrusted with stars. He slammed his fists into the TARDIS console, again and again and again.<p>

He should have known. Should have guessed how she would lie.

"You win," he had said and meant it.

The significance was as a physical slap.

In death she had claimed the ultimate victory.

* * *

><p>The flesh puckered, Danny's face pale and sick with death.<p>

"You promised me."

"I'm sorry," Clara whispered into his wrecked and ravaged face. "I tried."

"You didn't try hard enough." He said it fierce, betrayed at an order disobeyed. "Why didn't you try harder?"

"I would have to take him to Afghanistan," she went on whispering. "How could you expect me to get into Afghanistan and with such a small boy?"

It's been hell is what she didn't say. The boy, without a word of English, lost in terror and wonder in equal parts. How could she ever communicate to a young child the truth of what had happened and what he had seen, what he had been?

Danny shook his head, mournful.

"I never promised you that it would be easy, Clara. Never that, but I went through hell for you, live in hell now, so that you could at least try."

Clara reached out to touch his face, heart aching. He recoiled, face smoothing into younger lines, delicate and thinly drawn. The boy.

He cried out.

"It's me. Clara," she said, pleading. "We're past this now. You know me. You trust me."

But he was steeped in mist and fading out.

A shadow loomed. Tall, wrinkled. A new face. She hadn't seen him in so long. That big, stupid face. Those sad, sad eyes.

"Doctor?"

He was grinning, the years leaking away as in a summer's dream.

"Clara, my Clara. I found it. I found Gallifrey."

He was level with her now, grasping her hands. They felt hot and sticky.

"I'm glad. I can see that you're happy."

He checked her with a frown.

"Not happy, Clara. Insane. Manic. Yes. But happy? Look at my hands, Clara." He brandished them in her face. "Look."

They dripped red and sticky with blood. He laughed, a high keen.

"I killed them. I killed them all."

"But why?" she asked, bewildered and afraid.

"They were all of them shades of her and every time we spoke I was reminded."

Fear clenched her gut.

"Her?"

The Doctor's form changed; green eyes, pointy chin, bow ties (still not cool).

"Her. Yes, her. Keep up. That's the problem with you lot. You never connect the dots. You never learn to think and to listen. Her with the fruit laden hat and the umbrella. Took away your boyfriend prematurely." He tapped a long finger against Clara's nose. "Keep up."

"The Master."

The Doctor leant forward and his lips sucked Clara's nose.

"Clara, my Clara. I chose you well."

Choking terror.

"You?"

Missy lent in for a second kiss.

"Me, dear. Shall I pop the kettle on? I do love a nice chat with old friends." Clara stumbled backward as Missy's hands clutched at both shoulders. "You can't run. You can't escape."

A hand slid down to caress Clara's neck.

"Now. Say something nice."

Clara woke up in a sweat. It was a terrible dream and nothing more, she told herself. Missy and Danny were both irrevocably dead. The Doctor was no blood soaked murderer. And she, Clara? Well, she had done her best for the boy: teaching him English phrases, taking him to migrant counselling. Life went on.

She placed a protective hand against her stomach.

So why then was she so deathly afraid?


End file.
